Lack of Preparation for Winter Weather Leads to Improvisation

I'm used to it by now. From wearing socks on my hands as a kid playing in the snow, to using CD cases to clear ice off the windshield, when winter weather isn't a part of your normal, everyday life, you're forced to by innovative.

Rob Baird, great artist AND great ice scraper. Photo by (a very frigid) Jamie Garrett

After we prepared for Armageddon a few weeks back only to be disappointed by nothing more than a cold rain, I refused to put any preparation into this potential storm. While it wasn't exactly the great white north, the US 105 van had a window and windshield coated in ice when it came time to fill it up with gas today. I didn't want to send Dani out onto the roads with icy windows so I cranked the heat up and went to work.

The first thing I had to do was find an ice scraper. When I bought my new truck in April, the farthest thing from my mind was whether I should keep the ice scraper or scrap it. I chose to scrap it. I chose wrong. Not a single person in the building had an ice scraper to loan me so I did what I've done in the past when an ice scraper was nowhere to be found. I grabbed a CD out of my CD stash, Rob Baird for what it's worth, and went to scraping away at the ice. CD cases are good as long as the ice isn't thick, and luckily the heater had broken up a little bit of the ice, but it was still quite the task to get the windows cleared.

What about you? What MacGyver-esque moves have you made to get the ice off your car? Has anyone ever been unfortunate enough to try the warm water trick on the windshield? If you've never been told about the effects of warm water on a cold windshield just make sure you film the endeavor so that we can all enjoy it on YouTube.